I have scored an ampeg B15T solid state portaflex.. but the speaker is blown.. the head works fine as I've used it myself powering several other cab's at our practice room, but the EV speaker is blown.. I've never had a speaker reconed.. is it worth it.. I guess the EV will be a a better speaker than say a £50 eminence driver that I could replace it with? Anyone got any recommendations.. I know there's a company in wembley that does recone speakers i've just always replaced old ones with new units before.

belta wrote:id go with reconing too, however, older speakers mounted in pressed steel (or other magnetic alloy) baskets become magnetized over time, and tend to lose their punch..... slightly

i was just going to ask about this topic. i bought an amp a long time ago with a similar situation. i took it to a place to have it fixed, and they said the speakers were blown. they fixed everything else, and i've held on the originals all this time. but i was wondering is it really worth it to recone them? even with the (slight) loss of punch? how would they compare to new speakers? at what point are they beyond saving, and should just be tossed?

Jess Oliver, the man that designed the Portaflex, suggests this mod to all of the Portaflex amps:

"I do suggest a solid state rectifier, instead of a tube, which increases the power and reduces the heat. Another improvement is replacing the speaker with a Premium Quality speaker with an edge wound voice coil. This greatly increases the effective power. Using a 4-ohm speaker instead of an 8-ohm does much the same."

I'm thinking about doing it to the Portaflex SB-12 you see in my avatar.

Here's an interesting interview with Jess, from which the above quote was taken:

3. get new, better neodymium speakers like the guy on the phone at the audio place told me to do.

Help me out here.

Also, if anyone nearby wants to trade a 1x15" cab for a 4x10, holler at me.

Sending stuff out to be reconed is for expensive speakers like JBLs, alnico Celestions and Jensens.

Peavey speakers are designed to be reconed by non-professionals, but I don't think GK is the same.

Neodymium speakers are known to not handle distortion well, so if you use overdrive, I'd stick with the usual heavy ceramic ones.

If it's a ported cab I'd definitely buy the GK replacement. If it's one of the ones that used 32 ohm speakers in parallel instead of 8 ohms in series-parallel, same deal. If it's sealed and uses 8 ohm drivers you could throw in pretty much anything.